Descendants of Robert E. Lee and the people his family enslaved to meet in moment of reconciliation

[@joeryanstrialbook2005]

The narrator, not surprisingly, gets the fact wrong. "It" was not "ultimately passed down to his daughter and R.E. Lee." Custis's Will specified that the land be passed to his daughter, Mary Custis, for her to use during her life. Upon her death title was to pass to her eldest Son, Custis Lee. R.E. Lee had no legal interest in either the land or the Africans at any time. The narrator intones that "the slaves did not receive their freedom until the end of the Civil War." Poor guy so ignorant, or is it intentional deception to fit a political narrative. R.E. Lee, acting as executor of the Custis Estate, executed, as the Will required, a deed of manumission in December 1862 and had it filed in the Henrico County Courthouse. By then, the Africans residing at Arlington were already "free" by virtue of the fact that, in May 1861, the Union Army took possession of the place. When McClellan came with the army to the Peninsula, in April 1862, he took possession of both plantations. What happened to the Africans the record does not reveal, though letters Lee wrote to his wife at the time indicate that, despite McClellan's occupation, after he left, instead of following him to Fort Monroe, some, if not all, of the Africans remained on the farm, or moved to Richmond to find work. The narrator winds up his spiel, with the line "and the Africans the Lee family enslaved." The record show "the Lee family" did not own the 130 Africans the narrator describes, Mary Custis's father did, having inherited them from his grandmother, Martha Dandridge Washington.

[@barrykelly2722]

They were enslaved already and long before General Lee or anyone else had anything to do with it. And, while I disagree with slavery, it wasn't invented by 'Merika. And it wasn't exclusive to Africans. Hebrews, Irish, etc etc were unfortunate to endure it also.

[@katbrown1449]

Uhhhmmm.................... the POINT is reconciliation genius.

[@Larry26-f1w]

Uhhhmm …was there a point made in this piece?